


Gifts and Treasures

by nagia



Series: Burnt Offerings [4]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, Reincarnation fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:36:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything's got a price, from your first wish to your second chance. Direct sequel to Burnt Offerings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a prelude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuffie dreams.
> 
> (yuffie doesn't dream)

In the distance, there's a black castle that glistens in the sunlight, a thick wet shine in the surface of dark stone. It's especially pretty at sunset, when it stands out against a painted sky.

(in the distance, there's a tall red building with a glittering green roof; water sparkles beneath her feet and she looks up toward it)

She slips out of the town, across solid gray stone that's smooth as milk beneath her bare feet. Makes her silent way through the bailey and across the dried-out motte that might once have been the Falls.

(she walks along golden stone and red wood. white paper lanterns and blue-green-red-gold silk banners flutter in the breeze and somebody's olive hand holds tightly to hers; when she looks up from their entwined hands she never sees a face, only gray eyes and short black hair and a smile every bit as wicked as her own)

She passes through the cavern, only stopping to touch the crystal that comprises its walls. It's cool to the touch, as if it's not really crystal but is actually ice, the ice that made up the floating, rising, sinking pathways she took to return home, that final terrible year.

(but home's doors are painted bright colors to ward away bad luck; its walls inside are white paper and she pulls her shoes off. somewhere in the house, water gurgles even louder than the dragon-god-river who twists through her city)

Barefoot, she picks her way across the rock-salty barren Field, all the way to the End. From here it's a rock-sharp climb down a cliff face that cuts her with every careful movement. Seconds, minutes, hours slip past, slick with her sweat, but the sun hovers just above the horizon, burnt gold in a field of kaleidescopic color.

(there's a pond, and two lazy koi swimming through it. her companion stops moving, but she bends down to touch the water, wondering what they're thinking with their second-hand minds)

The cliff-face ripples, distorted rings radiating from one central circle, but she turns her back on it. There's a forest entirely of dead plants, with huge thorny vines as thick around as her waist. Skeletal briar roses and blackberry bushes, their blossoms and their thorns fallen and scattered all over the ground, block her way just as sternly as any living thicket ever could.

(the koi look up at her, mouth their answers silently, and she realizes that she is the one holding on to the other: she has been leading the other person here this whole time)

The small thorns of the blackberry bushes cut her feet, while the big thorns of the towering vines cut her arms. She makes her way through anyway, her own blood shimmering behind her in the night's angry rise.

(there is something wrong with the water. she cannot see her reflection; only gray eyes and a smile that is too cruel to be hers.)

At last she comes to the castle walk, takes slow, painful steps across the drawbridge. The vines are thickest here, winding around the chains and the walls. They embrace cruel-looking black gargoyles, whose gazes she ignores as she crosses into the courtyard.

(she looks up from the koi pond and back at her companion, but the other has already turned her back, slipping soundlessly through hallways that she could swear she knows)

The courtyard is a mass of thorns and vines. Wind blows through, whisper-soft, and she could swear she hears the hiss of entangling snakes. Somewhere, a choked fountain burbles in a tinny, half parched voice. In the center of the garden, she can just barely make out the dusk pink shape of a giant closed rosebud. The bud's color is only so pale and lifeless, she realizes, because it is sick.

(she catches the last flicker of her companion's path through the house, chases her through white sliding walls and under a curtain. it's like going down the rabbit-hole and into the wonderland someone once told her about, because the curtain leads to a cramped passage so dark she has to feel her way through, and the passage leads to a room that's bright with candlelight. the air is close with thin smoke and a smell she recognizes but cannot name.)

She threads her way through the vines with convoluted motions, ignoring the new cuts and the way she has to stretch hurts the old ones. Every step through this garden is like stepping out of her own skin, but at last she reaches the center, and touches her hands to the rosebud.

(a golden statue, inlaid with jewels, takes up most of the opposite wall. her companion stands facing it, her head tilted up to look at its face, and she, too, looks up, watches the lifeless eyes that glitter with knowledge)

The bud stays closed, stays as cold to her touch as the ice-crystal cavern walls. Worse, when she looks to the sky, she sees the sun finally beginning to dip below the horizon. The bud has to be opened before all the light is gone; it cannot survive another night, with only the cold pale distance of the stars to sustain it.

(the smoke drifts lazily through the air, and she watches it, her gaze turning to the plaques that surround the statue and decorate the floor. she can almost read them.)

No time for subtlety, not that she'd take the subtle way even if she did have time. She turns, wheeling hastily in a circle, before closing her hands aroud a thorn as long as her arm. She jerks down, hard and fast; hears the vine creak. After a few more attempts, she severs the thorn from the vine and, turning again, plunges it through the bud's soft skin.

(she feels the weight of her companion's gaze, and almost looks over. but not yet. it isn't time yet.)

The flower flesh parts silently beneath her knife. Her breath comes in gasps as painful and jagged as the cut she's making in the bud; the noise drowns out the wind's mumbling through the vines.

(wake up, says her companion, but rather than rise from this dream-within-a-dream, she watches the golden statue fall open with the sonudless, perfect grace of a chrysanthemum blooming.)

There is a person at the center of the flower. She catches only a glimpse of silken black hair and olive skin before—

* * *

It was dark. She was falling. Even that barely registered while she twisted and flailed. One leg was tangled up in something soft, where the hell was she and why—

Her upper arm and shoulder thumped against something hard.

Yuffie struggled against her sheets with quick, angry movements. She finally squirmed out of their stranglehold and pitched them back onto her bed.

The plaintive wail of a teenager roused from sleep for no good reason (and a ninja who hadn't fallen out of bed in ten years) filled the night: "What the _hell_ was _that_?"


	2. fascinating facets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Destroyed castles, desolation, tangling vines, Twilight Crystals, treasure. All in a day's work, really.

_Radiant Garden: Ansem's Castle_

Vincent dodged the spray of ice from the Defender's shield, drifting backward out of reflex. Just when he'd gotten out of its way, another Defender sent Heartless fire magic at him.

Across the room and closer to yet another Defender, Auron grunted his dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. Out of the corner of his eye, Vincent saw Auron bring down a sword almost as heavy as Cloud's own Buster Sword, leaving a sharp gash in the Defender's shield-arm.

He ripped at a piece of the nearest Heartless's armor, managing to pull it off with the claw. The roar of pain the Heartless gave was nearly deafening, was almost heartbreaking.

Had these been human once, or were they artificially manufactured, like the things that Ansem had made, in the History Of Radiant Garden As According To Cid?

It didn't matter. He told himself it didn't matter. Whatever they might have been, they weren't human anymore—and even if they had been, what difference did it make?

He plunged the claw into the open spot, felt shadow ooze and congeal around it. The claw didn't register texture the same way his human hand did, but it did recognize the sticky shifting and cooling.

The Defender collapsed in a shower of sparks, slowly vanishing.

It was about time.

Vincent moved toward the next Defender, converging on it in almost the same moment as Auron. Auron's sword moved through the air so quickly it whistled, even as the fingers of Vincent's left hand found a chink in its armor.

Even before the Defender had vanished, the door to the room slammed open. The noise reverberated off stone walls while electricity crackled in the background.

"I got the Lift Stop working again!"

The voice was Yuffie, and the tone was all thief's triumph, but something sounded wrong.

"We've gotta come back here with plaster sometime," Yuffie continued, the pace of her words just a little too quick. Her tongue was almost tripping over itself in her rush to speak. "That pipe that smacked Squall in the face is still out in the open. So are a ton of other pipes. I bet people could get really hurt."

Yuna was the one to point out the flaw in Yuffie's logic. Her gentle tone was only reinforced by the way she clung to one of the straps on Auron's collar. "But no one goes inside the castle anymore."

Yuffie waved a hand. "C'mon, let's get going! Even if none of it's in the library, we should still head that way!"

***

_Radiant Garden: Ansem's Castle_

The Library was a maze of bookshelves, tangled and twisted. Vincent followed Yuffie through it, idly noting the ease with which she picked her path.

It was strange to see Yuffie so at home in a library. So at home anywhere but Wutai and Tifa's bar. But Tifa no longer owned a bar and Wutai was long gone.

He followed her through the Library to the Lift Stop. After that, Ansem's castle was a disjointed sequence of rooms with glittering lines tracing their ways through the air, of electricity crackling from exposed panels, of shattered or stained marble.

Yuffie stopped to stare at one wall, her lip curling. Ivy had grown all over it, hiding what he presumed was white marble away beneath deep green leaves.

"Thunder-thunder-thunder-thundara!"

The plants jolted, went brown as white-hot sparks scattered through in fractal patterns. But the ivy's death wasn't enough, apparently, because Yuffie began pulling at it. She dug her fingers in and began to tear down the vines in thick, heavy clumps.

Rikku turned from her deathgrip on another of the straps hanging from Auron's collar, looking at Yuffie with concern writ clearly on her tiny face. She drifted away from the undead—an unSent, he called himself—and trailed glitter in the air. She changed size with a quiet pop and immediately moved for Yuffie.

There was a faint outline of wings on the small of Rikku's back. It glistened, shining like gold on creamy skin, as the fairy reached out to touch Yuffie's bare shoulder.

"I grew up here. It's home. It shouldn't... It shouldn't be this broken down." Yuffie shook her head. Her jaw tightened, her eyes narrowed in an expression that boded nothing but determination. "I'll fix it up again."

Vincent said nothing. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing to say.

For an instant, she looked a little sharper, a little crueler—her eyes a little grayer.

For an instant, she could have been talking about Wutai.

***

_Radiant Garden: Ansem's Castle_

Vincent stepped off the final lift and looked southwest, at the rising smoke of Radiant Garden. Afternoon sunlight glittered off faraway rooftops, though it was just a few distant sparkles even to his own enhanced vision.

He tried to imagine what this town might have looked like before the Heartless, but all he could see was Kalm.

Red flickered at the edge of his vision. He turned, saw Auron step off the lift and sail past. His stride was evenly measured, obviously designed to carry him quickly without being too tiring.

What he caught of the unSent's expression, before he moved out of view, was unreadable.

Yuffie and Rikku dashed ahead of them. Vincent saw only a bare curve to Yuffie's lip, the very beginnings of the maniac grin he knew.

"It's the chapel up next," the ninja called over her shoulder. "Try and keep up, will you?"

He didn't bother to reply, but he did follow a litle faster. For all that this crumbling castle was brand new, was potentially lethal territory, following Yuffie was exquisitely familiar.

The chapel doors swung inward. The deeply scratched heavy wood – oak, perhaps, if they had oak on this world – hung limp from creaky hinges.

Vincent found only a cursory resemblance to a chapel in the vast space. A vacant marble plinth loomed over the far side of the room. He spotted a few boards of dark wood, more like kindling than a chapel pew, that had somehow migrated to the sides and corners of the room.

No books, no papers; neither hymnals nor upholstery. If this had been a chapel, someone had stripped it clean of religion. Had stripped it clean of life. Even the stained glass looked dim as it cast bare bright shadows of shapes that might once have been roses.

Auron strode directly into the light beneath a window. The glass painted over his skin with a burgundy hue.

"Hn," he said.

Yuffie swept forward, flanked by Paine, who circled the air around the ninja's head. She gave no sign that it bothered her.

"There's magic in here," Yuna said.

Auron stopped where he was. The brown of his good eye seemed a piercing red in the light, and Vincent wondered if he'd looked like this, once, nine years and more ago –

No. No use going back to those yesterdays.

Rikku spun on her heels, her ankles crossing neatly just before she stepped off the ground. A glitter, a shimmer, the white-hot flash of fairy magic Vincent knew all too well, and she was once again fairy-sized.

"Yunie's right!" But Rikku's expression turned from cheerful to puzzled, and finally to blank. "Except it's..."

"Not fairy magic," Paine added.

Yuffie ducked away from Paine and stalked along the marble altar. She ran one gloved hand along the smooth marble, eyes half-lidded in concentration.

Vincent allowed the corner of his lip to quirk up for a moment. Yuffie's blood could have congealed into a mastered Steal materia. Apparently, she'd retained some of that expertise.

"But Maleficent's an evil fairy, right?" This, Yuffie asked as she knelt to run her fingers along the very base of the altar, where someone had carved roses. "So all her magic should be – wha?!"

A dull click echoed from within the altar. Somewhere within the castle, ancient gears groaned, while pipes hissed, and the altar opened, blossoming like a flower, ticking like clockwork.

Or like a timebomb, he thought, wishing once again for the Death Penalty, or a firearm like it. As it was, he tensed his left hand and allowed Fire to crawl down his human arm.

But the altar presented them with treasure. Gears and pulleys hissed as as the opening revealed a tarnished silver cask.

As one, the fairies drew in a startled breath.

Yuffie reached out, swung the lid of the cask up.

Despite the black grit tha covered much of the silver, the cask's contents sparkled where they lay on emerald crushed velvet. Thorns had pierced the velvet, coiled and curled throughout the cask, but none of them seemed able to touch the treasure.

It was a rose, long-stemmed and perfectly formed, made entirely of some multi-faceted, nearly luminous crystal. The cask clearly wasn't mythril, but the crystal might have been any of the synthesis materials Moogles valued.

"Twilight," Yuffie breathed. "It's cut from Twilight crystal."

Paine shook her head once. "You can't cut Twilight crystal."

"Moogles can." But Yuffie eyed the rose dubiously, as if she knew it hadn't been Moogle-crafted. She reached out, tapped the rose with a fingernail.

Rather than the simple _plink_ of glass, or the softer sound of quartz, a musical note echoed from the crystal. It trilled through Vincent's ears, down his spine, sent rolling waves of goosebumps all over his back. In a distant corner of his mind, the Galian Beast growled.

Yuffie tapped the rose again, and the note repeated itself. It seemed to reverberate through the room.

"Well," she said, voice cheerful. "Looks like I found the only thing worth my time. Anybody wanna tell me what it is?"

* * *

_Radiant Garden ~ Merlin's House_

The silver box was heavy in Yuffie's arms, but she just adjusted her grip every time it got too bad. She could feel Vincent staring at her while they traipsed down the path back from the Castle. He was still watching her as they climbed the steps in the Bailey, as they ducked past the bouncy-spike Heartless that always showed up right after the Bailey.

He was still watching her as she zipped past the steps, just jumping down the gray walls and skipping past the bookworm Heartless so she could plant her foot right in the middle of Merlin's door.

"Oh, Merlin," she sing-songed, unable not to smile at having found treasure.

Cid looked up from his computer. She caught a slow smile twitching across his mouth before he rolled his toothpick around and faked a frown. "Brat, were you raised in a barn, or do you just wanna break my doggone door?"

"Don't you mean _my_ door?" Merlin's tone was pointy, but when Yuffie looked over to the tea table, she could see crow's feet of amusement around his eyes.

Cid waved a hand and returned to his typing.

"I found treasure."

"That'd be that silver box you're carryin'?"

The door burst open again, and the friendly neighborhood something-or-others tumbled in after, like leaves carried on a breeze. Vincent and Auron stepped through following them.

Vincent stopped in the doorway. He seemed to scan the room, but when his gaze locked on her, it felt like he'd spent no time at all looking. His brows drew down for an instant and Yuffie just knew he was going to have Something To Say about her running off ahead of him while carrying treasure, later, when he felt like pulling his High Queen Of Everything act.

Cid didn't even look up from the computer. He shook his head, rolling his toothpick around and finally reaching up to press two fingers around it, like it was a cigarette. "Barbarians, all of 'em."

Vincent's gaze darted to Cid and he opened his mouth to say something.

Yuna beat him to it. She drifted forward, glittering and shining even as she moved, and somewhere between one step and the next she was human sized.

"Wizard Merlin," she said, sounding like it was half a gasp, and Yuffie remembered that Yuna had been shy, back before Radiant Garden fell. "Yuffie found the treasure of Ansem's Castle!"

Merlin's eyebrows raised, and he began to splutter something before at last he shook his head. "I think we'll need tea."

Yuffie watched him wave his wand around, directing the tea set through the air. It was always fun to watch Merlin work his magic. He didn't seem to use nearly as much glitter as the fairies did, but, well.

There was no making tea sets dance with Thundaga. And his magic smelled like oatmeal raisin cookies.

A horrible scraping sound made her jump. Her hands went to her small shuriken even as she turned to face the noise.

Cid was pushing his chair closer to the computer. He turned away from it, bypassing his chalkboard covered in weirdo diagrams, and strolled smoothly toward the tea table.

"Civilized folk always need tea," he pronounced as he settled himself into a ridiculously plush chair. "Now let's see what you got, kiddo."

Yuffie felt her grin widen and she sat down cross legged in one of the other tea chairs. She wiggled her fingers to beckon Vincent and Auron to join them.

They sat down at the expanding tea table, and Auron even accepted a cup of tea (without milk or sugar). Vincent reached for a cup on his own, pouring milk in, but totally skipping the sugar bowl.

Cid just looked at Yuffie expectantly.

She rolled her eyes – despite the grin – and dumped the silver box on the table.

Merlin adjusted his spectacles and leaned forward, touching his fingertips to the black spots on the silver. Cid leaned back, his fingers going to that stupid toothpick again, and made an interested noise.

Yuffie tripped the box's catch and peeled the lid off. The lid clattered to the floor.

That was a mistake, she realized in the heartbeat between the last ringing sound of metal on stone and the moment that black thorn vines boiled out of the box. Their movements made a hissing sound, almost like snakes, and for a second she thought she was back in that weird dream again.

She smacked vines with the flat of the Four-Point, hissing out Thundara as she moved.

Everything else was a kaleidoscope. Cid dodged back, already reaching for his spear. Auron brought his sword down on the vines, shattering the table. The fairies flew away, beginning spells.

She caught sight of Yuna twirling a long, long wand. More a staff, really. Like Aerith's. Rikku was twirling two wands with expert precision, and even Paine had a wand out.

Spells pelted into the vines – the fairies cast Thunder, and Blizzard, and Fire. There was no telling which fairy cast which.

But Yuffie's Thundara did nothing to the vines, and neither did the fairies's spells. Auron's sword was shattering everything else around them – the table, chairs, teacups – but didn't seem to be hurting the vines themselves. And Vincent couldn't even touch them at all: every time he swiped with his claw, he seemed to miss the vines, no matter how obvious it was that he should have hit them. The Fire spells that wreathed his arms didn't scorch the greenery that surrounded them all.

Yuffie skidded backward, dodging thorns, dodging attempts to entangle her arms and feet. The Four-Point couldn't seem to touch them, either.

She stopped still in the middle of another Thundara. Something was burning, she could smell the scorch and smoke. Had one of the Fire spells hit something flammable in the house?

Then she recognized it: burning oatmeal raison cookies.

She looked to Merlin, saw his hands upraised and the flash of his ancient eyes.

"That is enough," he snapped, then repeated: "hguone si tahT."

The boiling, hissing, reaching vines stiffened and then went limp.

Merline waved an imperious hand and muttered,"!enog eB"

Yuffie watched the vines dry up, and shrivel, and then finally wink out of existence altogether. Merlin's wizard magic was always a treat to see, but this was —

She'd only ever seen Merlin's magic as that magic that smelled like oatmeal raisin cookies and was good for levitating tea sets and making weird-colored steam. This: this wholesale destruction of whatever had managed to piss him off...

It was beyond cool! She'd have to see if she could convince him to do the same thing to Squall's collection of conditioners.

— And now it was over. Yuffie panted, stared down at the rose in the box, at vines that trembled and never touched the crystal.

Cid whistled.

Merlin reached a hand out toward the box. He touched the silver and mumbled something backwards, but he never reached inside.

Yuffie did that herself, carefully. She wasn't worried about breaking it; Twilight Crystal was as strong as it was musical. But the crystal looked so clean, and her hands suddenly felt dirty.

She half wanted to inspect her fingernails for dirt.

"The Dewprism," Merlin breathed. "Yuffie, my girl, you've found the Dewprism."

* * *

Where, when the gods would be cruel,  
Do they go for a torture? where  
Plant thorns, set pain like a jewel?  
Ah, not in the flesh, not there!  
— Algernon C. Swinburne, "Satia Te Sanguine"


	3. warning signs

Vincent joined them for dinner, that night. He sat in the back corner of the table and watched them all and seemed... silently happy. Yuffie was learning to read him, and while she couldn't figure the expression he was wearing, she knew what  _wasn't_  in it.

He was missing the hunted tension he'd worn before.

It was gratifying. It made her feel sick to her stomach, especially the way his face softened every time Aerith laughed.

But every now and then, usually right after Yuffie'd gone for another helping, his gaze turned to her. Red and almost glowing, like a Blazing Crystal, so hot and intense the stare burned her tongue.

"So what does it do, exactly?"

Yuffie piled yet another helping of chicken onto her plate and shrugged. "Grants my fondest wish."

"Time t' recalibrate the Claymores. Search-and-destroy  _glitter_ , never thought I'd see the day," Cid said, while Squall just pinched the bridge of his nose.

They all laughed. Even Vincent's eyes glittered with something like humor. And something inside her warmed; they were a family, they had always been a family, but it was good to be reminded and good to see Vincent part of it.

Squall reached for the plate of fried chicken, probably for another helping. Yuffie reached, too, snagging the plate and moving it away.

He frowned at her, and Aerith leaned over, held Yuffie's wrist, while Tifa moved the plate back into his reach.

Tifa wrinkled her brow. "It doesn't really grant wishes, does it?"

Squall looked up at that, eyes narrowing, Blizzaga blue piercing. They all knew who Tifa was thinking about.

"Merlin says only once, and only the thing you wish for with all your heart."

Aerith hummed with thought. "You have to wonder how it knows. Do you have to ask it? Rub it three times?"

"Dreams," Cid said, voice even more hoarse than usual. He sounded gruffer than he had a moment ago. "Dewprism's part of a lot of old wives' tales, kiddo, but they all agree on dreams."

Yuffie had to laugh at that. "So you put it under your pillow and hope it doesn't keep you up all night?"

"Never much listened," Cid replied. "Superstitions ain't what I'd call science."

"Liar. You listened to all those stories. And  _you're_  the one whose fondest wish is glitter."

"Got it in one," he drawled, right before he stole her last piece of chicken and dipped it in a little cup of Tifa's homemade salad dressing.

* * *

That night, her dreams were tangled. She dreamed of a river that glistened through dusty golden streets, and when she caught sight of the green-tile roofs reflected in it, blue-green scales rained from the sky. In the wake of the rain, crysanthemums bloomed, unfurled like roses, and turned to crystal.

And in the back of the dream, a stone rose crooned a lullabye that scratched her eardrums and made her want to sing along and made her desperately wish she could wake up and run to Aerith.

She ran from the rain and the flowers and the lullabye, stumbled onto a wooden deck, where she kicked her shoes off. She slid the building's door open and closed it hard behind her.

A man with corpse-pale skin and wearing a white kimono knelt at a low table, drinking tea. She lurched toward him, suddenly dressed in a voluminous green kimono of her own.

When she sat down at the table, he looked up. His face rotted away, skin falling off and into his teacup. His bone structure changed, his jawline squaring out, and his eyes flared to life. They burned like coals in his hollowed eye sockets.

"Hades," she said with a mouth that didn't want to work.

"There's a catch, kid," he said. "Genies give you three wishes. The Fates give you  _one_  if you're lucky."

"What are you even talking about, Corpseface?"

"Whose wish was the reunion, kid? Who reached across space and time and death itself?"

"You're not making any sense."

"One of you got one wish. The other of you gets another. But no such thing as a free lunch. So what are you gonna pay?"

"I'm not paying anybody anything until I know what's going on."

That made him laugh. It was the sound of bones cracking, of a body drying in the grave, of fire crackling, and it was a burbling, rollicking belly-laugh, too. He pulled a scrap of white wool from inside a kimono that was unravelling, replacing itself with a black peplos.

"I know what you want. More than he does. More than you do. And maybe you'll even get it. But it's like the deal with Orpheus: some things, you take on faith. Don't ask them any questions, and the Fates can't half-lie to you."

His hair and eyes were fire, but his touch was cold. His skin felt like the belly of a dead fish when his fingers touched hers.

She took the scrap of white from him. It bloomed, too, red ink spreading outward in circles and splatters, like a bloodstain. And when the entire scarf was blood-red, it deepened to the scarlet of Vincent's cloak.

She looked up.

"You're only immortal until they prove you can die," Hades said, and smiled, and it was the worst smile she'd ever seen.

* * *

In the morning, she wandered down to the kitchen to find Aerith and Squall locked in their usual argument about cold coffee. Just like all the other times, Aerith's mug was steaming, but Squall's wasn't.

Tifa stood by the stove. Something sizzled in a saucepan.

And Vincent and Cid sat at the kitchen table. They both had steaming mugs of something, though Vincent held his in only one hand. He looked very slightly mussed, as though he hadn't fully trusted Tifa's hairbrush this morning.

Yuffie pulled the plates from the cabinet and set the table, because nobody else had thought to do it and she wanted to eat soon.

"Coffee-drinker," Cid lamented when Yuffie sat down next to Vincent and peered into his mug.

"Your unending and tearful grief about Vincent's coffee why you look hungover?"

"Ain't a hangover 'til I'm hanging over somethin and losin' my breakfast."

"Right, right," Yuffie nodded sagely. "And you're not drunk 'til you can't hold onto the floor."

"Glad to see I taught you somethin' worth knowing."

Tifa pursed her lips as she suddenly swooped down on the table with sausages and a platter of toast. "Eggs over-easy on top of biscuits, Cid?"

Yuffie pumped her fist in the air. Cid's special hangover breakfast! Vindication was sweet.

"Ain't had a drink since we got back here, Teef," Cid said, softly. He nodded toward Yuffie. "Spent half the night waiting for a certain fool girl to come screaming into the living room all night."

Yuffie felt her grin turn brittle. "What?"

"Night terrors again, Yuffie," Aerith said, finally looking up from the Great Coffee Debate. "I thought freeing Leviathan would stop them."

"Me too," Squall said, seating himself across from Yuffie. He piled toast and sausages onto his plate while never releasing his death grip on his coffee cup.

Aerith chuckled and covered his toast in butter with a little jam for him, since he didn't seem capable of letting go of his coffee. He drank deeply from his mug, shaking his head, and his fingers touched Aerith's for an instant when he finally let go of the coffee to take his toast back.

She took a bite out of it, smiling happily, and both she and Tifa giggled at the way Squall frowned.

Vincent went still.

"I was seriously screaming again?" She stopped forking sausages onto her plate, waited until her hands weren't trembling to start up again.

Vincent turned to her, raising an eyebrow. The lower half of his face was perfectly smooth, and most of his forehead, too. But the bridge of his nose had puckered slightly, like he was concerned.

"Yes," Squall growled. He batted Aerith's fork away from his plate and glowered at Yuffie. But it was an uneasy glower, like his hair had picked up on something wrong in the air.

"Do you remember anything about the dream?" Tifa set a few more platters down on the table and then finally sat down to eat with them.

Yuffie spread strawberry jam on her toast and covered it in powdered sugar. No butter, though, because she cared what happened to her heart.

"I dreamed Wutai again," she said while the white sugar piled up over the red. "But it was alright until Hades showed up."

That got Vincent's attention, and Squall's, too. They both stared hard at her. Vincent's eyes had widened, his lips drawn into a hard line.

He opened his mouth to ask her something, but Squall turned a hostile stare on him. "Can he communicate through dreams?"

There was a moment of silence as Vincent considered, his gaze smooth and cool and planted on Squall. "Perhaps. He is formidable."

His tone was cold, too, colder than Hades's hands had been. She caught a hard glint in his eyes and fought not to shiver.

* * *

Bad dreams never seemed as scary in the light of day. Once outside, Yuffie stretched and yawned. She basked in the early morning sunlight, felt it warm her all the way to her toes.

The door opened and closed again. Vincent stepped out.

"Are you following me?"

"What did Hades say?"

Vincent had landed on a world that was all but guaranteed to tell Hades to shove it, if he ever came looking. And he was still looking over his shoulder, as if waiting for Hades to appear behind every corner. If he hadn't been so earnest about it, she'd have thought he was completely ridiculous.

"You seriously think Hades actually showed up in my head while I was asleep?"

Vincent gave her a flat look.

Yuffie ignored it for a couple of moments, to keep her hand in. She wasn't about to cave for the High Overqueen Displeased Princess act, and he needed to learn that.

"Vince, I like you a lot, but you've got to get over this. You've got friends. If Hades comes looking, we'll kick him so hard his head won't stop spinning until he's been in the Underworld for a week."

Vincent folded his arms.

She sighed. "He said the Fates only grant one wish. And it's always got a price. Weird and creepy, but not exactly an  _I'll get you and your big red friend, too_."

"Hades does not warn his enemies," Vincent said, softly.

* * *

For sleeping among graves where none had rest  
And ominous houses of dead bones unblest  
Among the grey grass rough as old rent hair  
And wicked herbage whitening like despair  
And blown upon with blasts of dolorous breath  
From gaunt rare gaps and hollow doors of death,  
A maid unspotted, senseless of the spell,  
Felt not about her breathe some thing of hell

—Algernon C. Swinburne, "Tristram of Lyonesse"


	4. wicked hearts

Yuffie managed to throw the dream and Vincent's reaction to it out of her mind by the time they reached the Bailey. 

Being distracted when there were Heartless around could get you killed. They weren't in much danger here, thanks to the Claymores. But even though the Claymores zapped Heartless before they could become a problem, it was best to keep an eye on the world around them.

It would only get worse once they were back in the castle.

"Vince," she said when they passed the generator, her own private half-way landmark.

Vincent raised an eyebrow at her.

"Aren't you going to pick up a sword? I mean, even Cid's got a spear. You don't want to keep getting that close to the Heartless."

He didn't say anything. Instead, he rubbed the wrist joint of his clawgauntlet thing. Like that was answer enough. Maybe it even was.

Yuffie rolled her eyes, but didn't look away from him. "C'mon, Vincent. Not even Tifa really _likes_ engaging Heartless in hand-to-hand."

"I am making arrangements."

She snickered. He sounded so formal. It was kind of ridiculous, actually.

Also ridiculous? The way the three fairies went dead silent the instant they caught sight of each other. Rikku clasped her hands behind her back and pivoted on one foot.

"What's with the guilt?"

The fairies all looked at each other. Auron crossed his arms over his chest and Looked at Vincent — a square-in-the-eyes, heavy as laserbeams kind of look. It made the back of her neck itch.

Yuna dropped into her official spokesfairy role and drifted forward: "We were wondering where our treasure could be."

It wasn't much of an answer, and it didn't make the back of her neck stop itching. But it was better than nothing — at least until she figured out for herself just what was going on.

* * *

There were rooms and rooms and floors and floors above the Chapel. Yuffie'd never fought so many Guardians in a row since the Battle for Radiant Garden.

Everywhere she looked she saw cracking white marble. Copper pipes played peek-a-boo from behind crumbling facades. Steam leaked and hissed, electricity sparked and fizzed, from broken machinery.

In the background, she could hear gears shifting. Maybe a cog had slipped its place and was slowing the machine down, or maybe it needed oil. Regardless, just beneath the cheerful conversation the fairies kept going — and that Vincent and Auron ignored — was a neverending grinding noise, punctuated by a long, high whine.

And every now and then, she could have sworn she heard water burbling merrily past. No, not burbling. And not merry, either; merry, burbling noises were for streams.

She heard the purposeful, rhythmic stomp of a river heading for the ocean.

Yuffie kept her pace fast, forcing Vincent and Auron to follow close or even move ahead of her at times. The fairies kept up, uncomplaining.

And neither Auron nor Vincent said anything when she stripped every panel, moved every painting that Maleficent hadn't blasted into char. She even tapped her shuriken against the floor, seeking hollow spots.

But there were hollow spots everywhere, and none of them were hiding any treasure. Maleficent and the Heartless had really done a number on this place.

They reached one of the main towers just before sundown.

Paine looked around, eyebrow raised.

Yuna landed on a windowsill. The dying light lit the dust around her. Made her seem to glow peacefully. Between the white wings and the long, dark braid, Yuna looked like something on a stained glass window she'd seen somewhere before.

Yuffie seized onto that thought, but the memory of the window slipped away. There was no telling where she'd seen it; Traverse Town, probably.

"Maleficent's magic was strongest here. If our treasure isn't in this tower, it's not in this castle."

"Right, toss the room," Yuffie grinned.

* * *

Alright, the tower had looked like a war zone before. Now it just looked like four teenaged girl-sized wrecking balls had crashed into it. Well, that was one way to put it.

Yuffie cast aside the last panel from the last wall. Immediately, she could feel her teeth start to buzz. A headache sprang up, burning and stabbing a thousand little needles from the back of her neck all the way to the crown of her head.

Behind the panel lay inky darkness. She reached a hand out, but no matter how she tried, she couldn't touch the darkness. There was a dead zone where her hand simply stopped moving.

So she snaked her hand in from another angle. In response, the darkness moved backward, sloshing away like water in a glass.

"There's something back here."

Immediately, she had three fairies all peering over her shoulder. Yuna hummed something. The headache vanished, and so did the vibration in her teeth. All three of the fairies hummed together; glitter drifted in a wind that wasn't there.

The darkness vanished. In its place lay a single black feather.

Vincent let out one of those audible silences. It even had an audible frown to it. High Over-Princess Drama-Queen was displeased.

Yuffie couldn't say she was impressed, either. "If that's your treasure, I don't want to see what you guys think is trash."

She pulled the feather out of its hiding place and turned it over and over in her hands. Peered at it. Someone with a lot of patience and a lot more precision had carved tiny roses and letters that didn't make words into the bare spots on the quill.

Paine let out a sharp noise, a warning cry. Rikku reached for her, trying to pull her arm back.

Crimson flickered; when she raised her eyes, she saw Vincent turning smoothly toward her. "Yuffie. Put that down."

The world purpled. The purple darkened to burgundy.

* * *

A white door opens and she steps through it, into a smaller room with three other walls and another door. She walks through the next door into a smaller room than that.

Door after door after door, each room smaller than the last.

The last room has no ceiling and no floor, only a garden and the sky. A girl in a green shirt and kakhi shorts sits in front of a fountain, head down and legs crossed with one foot on the opposite thigh.

The girl looks up.

"What does any of this even _mean_?"

The girl by the fountain laughs. Her eyes are too gray to be Yuffie's, but they have the same face. She'd know it anywhere. It's the very first face that she sees in the mirror every morning, the reflection that's a little too sharp and a little too old to be her own.

"It's a dream. It only means what you remember when you wake up." She smiles, except it's a grin and it's sharp; this is a hard girl and Yuffie almost remembers what it is to be her. "But listen up. You'll want to remember this part."

Yuffie sits next to the other girl, folds her legs the same way the other girl does.

"Being totally honest here, you don't have much time. And neither does he. It's like a stop-watch running reverse. And this time you can't see Meteor." The girl levels an accusatory finger. "We only say he's immortal 'cause we haven't seen him die yet."

For an instant the girl is Hades and she's the girl, and bone-pale skin drips _plop plop_ into the fountain. But the moment passes and the girl goes on: "The heist isn't over yet. You've got what you came for, but you're not _out_ yet."

"Time-out. Hold on. Time to call shenanigans," she says. "I want answers. Not riddles. I'm sick of riddles. You can't even _tell_ riddles right; you don't sound mysterious enough."

The girl by the fountain shakes her head. "No. You're trying to go back to yesterday. But you were a different person then."

Yuffie opens her mouth to reply, to browbeat the other girl into making sense. But before she can say anything, the other girl adds, "Okay. Lecture's over. You have graduated AVALANCHE Metaphysics 101 for fun and profit. Hoof it."

* * *

Someone was singing.

Yuffie woke to a star-spangled sky. She shivered, groping half-blind in the darkness for her shuriken. For a second she had no idea where she was.

A second later, she didn't need to know. She was alone, unarmed, outdoors, in the dead of night. Out of the range of the Claymores.

If there was a city map, it would have been pointing directly at her with a big giant arrow and the caption _YOU ARE BONED._

Alright, if there was no one around, then what was that song? It scratched at her eardrums. Yuffie clapped her hands over her ears, but that didn't help.

Five feet away, she saw a white-blue glow. The blue darkened to purple, then lightened to red and pink, then turned white and started the cycle all over again. She could only watch, hypnotized, as a rose hewn from Twilight Crystal lifted itself off the ground.

The song inside her head reached a crescendo. The Dewprism shattered. The glow turned white, then silver, then a shade of green that made her want to throw up, and finally burned to look at.

In the silence after the sound, she heard a low, throaty chuckle.

"The fondest wish of every heart," Maleficent's voice murmured, razor-sharp and yet velvety, "is power. You have restored mine to me, and for that, I owe you a boon."

* * *

"Inside me, a long dark hallway already caressed the other music of a single word, and what's worse, despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow."

— Mark Z. Danielewski, _House of Leaves_


	5. different people

Boon nothing. The big giant arrow of Yuffie's mental map turned red and started to blink. The caption changed from _YOU ARE BONED_ to _YOU ARE ROYALLY FUCKED_.

Well, even if she was presently unarmed, she was a ninja and she had second-tier Thunder magic. There wasn't anything she couldn't fry.

Yuffie didn't even wait for Maleficent to attack. Thundara screamed through her veins, making her hair stand on end. It arced out from her fingertips. The sky itself snapped and hissed. White-hot bursts of light left golden trails underneath her eyelids.

Maleficent raised her staff.

Something blue-silver and honeycomb-shaped shimmered in the air around the fairy. The Thunder magic struck it; the barrier flashed green. Purple wisps of light snaked their way away from it.

A Reflect spell? She'd never seen anything like it, but fairy magic wasn't human magic. Every crash of her magic against Maleficent's tasted salty underneath her tongue. She could feel something vast surrounding her, rolling on and on forever.

"That is so _cheating_!"

Maleficent laughed again. This time the sound was almost joyous, if a person this psychotic and vindictive could actually be happy about anything anyway. 

The laughter turned distinctly mocking. "Cheating, child? You paved the way for my return. What makes you an arbiter of justice?"

Yuffie backed away, muscle memory leading her to block her face with her fists. She opened her mouth to point out that she hadn't said a thing about justice (and what was an arbiter, anyway?), but instead she asked: "I don't remember paving anyone's way."

The fairy lifted her staff so the tip hovered a bare couple of inches off the ground, then slammed the tip down. It bit into dirt not with a crunch but with the _ping_ of tapped glass.

Glittering motes of dust gathered in the air, zigged and zagged and chased each other until they formed the crystalline outline of a rose.

Rather than say anything more, Maleficent smiled.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"You found it in my Chapel, yes? Surely you don't believe Ansem hid it there. If such a weapon as the Dewprism were his to wield, he would long ago have used it to end me."

And that made more sense than it didn't. Except: "Okay, if it's a weapon you had, why didn't _you_ use it to end Ansem?"

The wicked curve of Maleficent's mouth turned even more amused. "But why bother, when a mere riddle could move him to destroy not only himself but everything he loved in this world?"

The next few moments were a blur. She was vaguely aware of reaching for her smaller shuriken, and finding them. Thundara rolled through her and out of her, jolting from the sky down to dance with the stone they stood on.

Her fist connected with Maleficent's face. Something went _crunch_.

And all the while, all she could think was: Maleficent was why Ansem had begun experimenting with the Heartless. Her war. Her riddles. Her fault.

The ground was cool underneath her cheek. Yuffie blinked, trying to piece together just how she'd gotten there. But it'd happened too fast.

A gust of wind blew her backward. She looked up. Farther up. Up, and up, and up.

Maleficent's robes whipped around in the wind. The black fabric pooled. It kept pooling, turning the rest of the night into inky blackness. Behind her, the stars seemed brighter.

And in the woman's place stood a dragon.

This would have been the perfect time to have a dragon of her own. One that had been worshipped as a god. She could have been like, "So you're a dragon? I am totally not afraid of dragons." But no, sleep-walking crazy ninja that she was, she'd left her Summon Charm and the Four-Point at home.

* * *

The doors to Ansem's Castle slammed closed behind them. Tifa half-jumped at the noise, looking around as if she expected to have broken something. The sound didn't appear to startle Leonhart or Cid, who thumped the tip of his spear against the ground and let out a frustrated growl.

"Brat's gotta be around somewhere," he said, and for an instant the words echoed in Vincent's ears, at once a smoker's rasp and an ex-smoker's gruff voice. "It's not like it could take her off-world."

Tifa and Aerith exchanged looks. 

And Leonhart pinched the bridge of his nose. "Magic."

"You're tellin' me it _could_ have?"

"Maybe," Aerith said, idly tracing the Four-Point's ribbons with a thumb. "It depends on the spell and the caster. But I think this one would have just —"

Her explanation went no further. At that moment, a black cloud, veined through with green, spread across the sky to the west. It blotted out the view of the stars.

And then it was gone.

"Found her." Auron shifted his blade on his shoulder and moved forward, away from Ansem's Castle and toward the path back to the Bailey.

Vincent followed. The path streamed past in a headlong rush. He almost didn't see the town's generator, or the ruined gate. The path northwest was a blur of dark stone, interspersed occasionally with Heartless or formations of glowing crystals.

Sometime during the run, red flickered at the outside of his vision. Then it vanished; he passed Auron by.

By the time he reached a wide, bare field, he could hear the crackling of flames. Thunder howled loud enough to drown it out.

On the final plateau before the path died completely, leaving only plains too pitted for any sort of road, he found them. A dragon thrashed its tail all over the plain, sometimes trying to knock Yuffie back, sometimes coiling around her.

To her credit and his indefinable pride, Yuffie kept moving. She circled the dragon, or tried to, rolling away from the tail's strikes. He watched her somersault easily out of the tail's attempts to entangle her and was reminded for a long instant of other acrobatic tricks in other battles.

The instant passed. The somersault became a handspring that carried her almost out of a gout of green-purple fire. Almost, but not quite.

Vincent moved to intercept, wishing that he had the Death Penalty.

She took the moment's reprieve he offered without hiding in his shadow, rubbed a hand along the upper arm that had been burned. Despite the injury, she seemed unbowed; Yuffie had always been fierce in combat, nearly fearless.

"A dragon?" He didn't have the breath to spare for any other questions.

Yuffie had little breath for a reply: "Maleficent." She stopped for a moment, gulped for air, and added, "Magic stuff."

The dragon chose that instant to strike with her tail.

He lifted his arms, crossed them so they would take the brunt of the impact, and shifted his weight down. He heard his boots scrape stone, felt them dig into the ground beneath them.

When he could look up, Yuffie had vanished. White smoke replaced her, hissing out from near where ninja had been a moment before.

Maleficent paused in her assault. The dragon peered at the plain beneath it, clearly momentarily puzzled.

The air shimmered. Just as he caught her outline, thunder rolled. The sound shuddered through him, made the ground beneath them all tremble.

Vincent used Maleficent's distraction to cast Fire. Red-orange flame roared to life around his gauntlet. He struck out with that arm, drove his claws into Maleficent's tail.

The dragon shrieked.

Thunder clashed again. White-hot lines crackled along the dragon's black, scaly body.

Yuffie's outline finally solidified. She was a whirlwind of tiny shuriken. Most of them clattered harmlessly to the ground, but a few stuck.

A sword swept out, flashing silver in the light. It cleaved through the air quickly enough to whistle. Once again Vincent thought back to the Buster Sword and the Ultima Weapon.

Auron's blade struck one of Yuffie's shuriken. Metal rang. The shuriken buried itself in Maleficent's hide, drawing another agonized scream from the dragon.

The undead man cast a glance over his shoulder at Yuffie. "That's how it's done."

"Well, 'scuse me for not having the arm strength of a friggin' Behemoth." Yuffie rolled her eyes, then suddenly vaulted backward. She turned the leap into a back-handspring, tumbling neatly out of the way of Maleficent's claws.

Vincent dodged, too, making sure to drag his gauntlet along the dragon's skin.

He caught a flash of blue before something made contact.

Blood splattered.

Cid cursed long and thoroughly as he yanked on his spear. Vincent moved forward to help; the spear was stuck in Maleficent's hide.

Or so it had been, until some sort of wind — visible only as a razor-sharp glitter — began to curl around the engineer. Cid gave one last mighty heave and withdrew the spear, nearly knocking himself off balance, and slid down the dragon's side, toward solid ground.

"Looks like we can't even let you leave the _house_ , brat," Cid said. "You ever gonna explain this one to me?"

"Cid, please," said Tifa's voice from the battlefield's far side. An instant later, she was pulling her fist back from the dragon's side, and Maleficent was shuddering from the impact. "I'm sure this could have happened to anyone."

Tifa paused a moment. The smile that curved across her lips was almost gentle — but the glint in her eye was fierce.

"Well, maybe not anyone," she said before side-stepping Maleficent's strike and turning to deliver several blows of her own. Each punch connected with an earth-shaking crack.

Maleficent staggered back. Her chest and belly heaved as she gasped for breath.

Before any of them could press the attack, Maleficent's eyes glowed. Something violet, flecked with green, flared up around the dragon.

Some sort of Barrier. Vincent slammed his fist against it, watched it ripple for a moment before snapping back into place.

Comfortable warmth flickered to life in the pit of his stomach, flaring along his bones. He tasted something blue-green and smelled mint.

"I'm sorry we're late," Aerith said from somewhere behind him.

He turned just in time to see Aerith pitch the Four-Point in Yuffie's general direction. The shuriken wheeled through the air, whistling, before it bit into the dirt. Yuffie ran for it, snatching it up at speed, without slowing down.

"I've been missing this!"

Vincent caught one quick impression of a black blur before Leonhart collided with the Barrier. His gunblade left the Barrier rippling again. He paused for an instant, then renewed his assault.

Aerith took up position beside Cid, who was readying his spear. She seemed to glow, a warm, healthy shimmer dancing along her skin. Her fingers skimmed gracefully along Cid's arms, healing cuts that Vincent hadn't even seen inflicted.

Yuffie darted past the pair of them and turned so that the Four-Point was half braced against her chest. She spun on the ball of her foot, entire body pouring weight into the motion, and flung the shuriken.

It sailed quickly enough to be a silver blur. Leonhart struck out at the Barrier three more times and then dodged sideways.

The shuriken passed through the rippling Barrier, scored a deep gash in Maleficent's hide.

It was enough to distract the fairy from the magic. The Barrier dropped. Cid and Leonhart charged forward; Yuffie caught the Four-Point on rebound and resumed a run. Halfway across the clearing, she stopped again, turning the forward motion sideways, and threw the shuriken.

Cid's spear struck an unmarred patch of black scales. He twisted his wrists and pulled back with his full weight. 

The spear tore free just as the shuriken whistled past. It deepened one of the cuts already in the dragon's hide. The Four-Point glistened wetly with purplish-black blood when it returned to Yuffie's hand.

Leonhart made contact last. He swung his gunblade toward the dragon's eyes and face, startling her into rearing back. She hissed, snapping at him, but he had already spun away from her, only to go spinning back.

With Maleficent's attention elsewhere, Yuffie raised the Four-Point high in the air. Lightning, blue-white and sizzling hot, lit the night. It struck in Yuffie's footsteps, dogging her faithfully.

She made her way past Tifa and Aerith, past Leonhart and Cid. Past him. Vincent had a split second to register the motion before she planted her foot on Maleficent's tail and sprang up toward the dragon's back.

Yuffie's grip on the Four-Point changed. She brought her arm down in a swipe that left Maleficent howling. She somersaulted back, then dove for the dragon again. The new angle let her get in two more cuts.

Then she changed angles yet again. And Vincent began to recognize the attack pattern, for once arrayed against a single enemy. Yuffie kept moving; he stopped counting cuts.

The assault ended. She landed just a few steps away from the dragon, only a little out of breath. Fifteen fresh wounds oozed open on Maleficent's back and sides.

The world slowed, was crystal clear, every action perfectly defined even when it should have been chaos. 

The dragon began to shrink.

Leonhart lashed out twice with his gunblade, feinting, before realizing that she was no threat. He turned his back on her, then, rested his blade on his shoulder.

Cid spun his spear, then went still.

Yuffie stood, swinging the shuriken overhead in great swooping arcs, preparing a final throw and nearly falling off balance when she realized it was unnecessary. He recognized that slip all too well.

He had seen it before, had seen it countless times, was sure he would see it again soon. And refreshing as her joy was, he wished a life of peace on them all. Not for his own sake — he had not paid for such a bargain — but for the rest of AVALANCHE, who had given their lives. For Yuffie, who had died already, much too young.

Every instant that brought that fierce, maniac grin to her face was a brush with her own death. And he could not watch her die again; could not watch any of AVALANCHE die again.

The air around them began to glitter, and at last the dragon vanished. In its place knelt a fairy woman, black robes inky in the shadowed valley.

"Maleficent." Leonhart's voice was a dark promise of bloodshed to come. He needed no more malice, no more threats, than that, and gave none.

Maleficent looked up. Her eyes glinted like ice chips. "I am not ended yet, _puer fatale_."

The air around Leonhart exploded into steam and mist. The steam quickly turned to frost, which became true ice, falling to the ground in distracting sparks.

Maleficent didn't bother to create her barrier again. She waved a hand dismissively in Yuffie's direction. "Truly, I am restored, thanks to you. For that, our bargain is not ended."

And then she was gone. Where she had been, where blood had congealed, lay only shadow. And in the midst of that shadow, a single, shimmering bauble. The head of Maleficent's staff.

The world seemed to fall into a lull, as if they were all catching their breath. Yuffie's chest heaved. Leonhart's grip on his gunblade tightened and relaxed. Cid idly tapped the end of his spear against the ground.

It was Auron — perhaps because he did not breathe — who asked, "Restored?"

Yuffie sucked in a deep breath before she answered. "She wasn't making much sense. Something about how the Dewprism restored her magic and she owes me something."

"She owed you, and you attacked her?"

"Looks like it." Her voice was mild, as if her response made perfect sense. Perhaps it did, considering the history between Maleficent and Radiant Garden.

Vincent knelt by the head of Maleficent's staff. It was cool to the touch, left a pins-and-needles feeling in the fingers of his human hand.

Leonhart looked over. His expression stayed flat. When he spoke, however, his tone was almost thoughtful. "A favor."

Auron raised an eyebrow. Yuffie started yet another joke about Leonhart's hair. Something about all the conditioner going to his head or making him deaf, or the hairstyle itself blocking his hearing.

Vincent only half-heard the joke. His eyes had met Leonhart's, and as one, they looked down to the glittering bauble in his hand.

Yuffie stopped mid-sentence. "Watergod. She says she owes — and leaves that — _Vincent put it down_ —!"

He was already moving to release his hold. He would have anyway; his fingers were almost numb from the pins-and-needles. The gem fell.

And never hit the ground.

Motes of gold dust burst into sight. A veritable cloud surrounded a tiny, golden-winged figure; it was like watching a flower bloom all at once.

Rikku wrapped her arms around the staff's head. Her wings beat extra hard to keep her and her sudden extra weight aloft.

"Please, it isn't dangerous!" Yuna's voice drifted to them, soft as ever. She floated into view. "That's just what we need to find the treasure Maleficent promised us."

Leonhart's eyes narrowed. Cid's grip on his spear tightened for just a moment.

"And just where were y'all during that fight, anyway?"

Yuna shook her head, seeming sad. "We can't fight Maleficent. A long time ago, we..."

"We gave her our word." Paine flew toward Rikku, helped the other fairy stay airborne despite the stone's extra weight, without a flicker of apparent emotion. It was almost comical, to see two women struggle to hold onto something he or Yuffie could have picked up and crushed with one hand.

But it was where she came from that caught Vincent's attention. He traced the path of her entrance: from beyond the valley's ledge. She had come from beyond what Radiant Garden colloquially called "the End."

It left him with a sinking feeling he knew where Yuffie would go next.

* * *

Radiant Garden: After the End

If she thought about it for too long, it was actually kind of funny. Looking down, all she saw was spiky, jagged rock. But the face of the cliff she was clinging to felt smooth as the surface of a lake.

So Yuffie tried not to think about it too long. She knew what she was doing. It wasn't like she was actually going to fall to her ignominious, squashed tomatoes death or anything. But it would be stupid to die just because she started laughing and lost her hold.

Or if she gripped wrong. She'd already gripped wrong once; she knew there was blood dripping from her palms. She had to be careful about that. Even a little could make her hands too slick to grip properly, meaning she'd cut herself more.

And more. And still some more, until she was cutting herself every time she found a handhold or a foothold. And if that kept on too long, she'd either bleed to death or lose her grip entirely.

The descent took hours. Or maybe it only felt like hours; the sun hadn't risen yet when she finally reached the bottom.

She turned to look around. Nothing grew there. There were no flat spaces, no even surfaces — it was all chaotic, unwelcoming, foreboding. It looked intentional, really, but there was no way anybody would bother designing something like this.

Beyond the splintered wasteland lay what looked like some sort of wilderness preserve. If by 'wilderness' one meant 'thorny weeds.' Dead weeds, dry and cracked and brown. Live weeds with stems and vines and leaves so dark a green they looked poisonous. Weeds with thorns she could barely see and weeds with thorns as long as her arm. Wild roses and blackberries and something she couldn't name all tangled themselves together in varying stages of life.

The thicket looked like it went on forever.

"You'll need these," a voice said.

Yuffie jumped, only to wind up with a fallen thorn stuck in her foot once she hit the ground again. She spun around to seek the source of the voice.

A human-sized Paine lounged on a half-intact outcropping. She held Yuffie's shoes by the laces in one hand. Rikku and Yuna both held onto Maleficent's so-called "favor" while clinging to Paine's knee.

"Thanks."

"No problem." Paine watched her shake her shoes out and then wiggle into them. One eyebrow twitched, even while the very corner of her lip curled up just a tiny bit.

"I know me and my shoes are comedy mythril, but Big Red and the Queen Of Hearts up there are comedy _orichalcum_."

Whether they were funny enough to be worth their weight in excruciatingly rare metals or not, it seemed to take just as long for Vincent and Auron to descend as it had her.

It took having his feet back firmly on the ground, where the wind couldn't grab him as easily, for Vincent's cape to stop billowing ridiculously.

Auron smoothed his red teng-yi and took a step forward, away from the cliffs. Rikku immediately launched herself up from Paine's knee, making a bee line for Auron's collar.

Yuna followed, of course.

Paine stood up. They all squared themselves against the thicket.

"You sure that princess cape's a good idea, Vince?"

Vincent turned to look at her. He gave her one of his special My Cape And I Are Not Amused looks, which she ignored. He held the stare for a moment or so, then adjusted his collar to hide more of his face.

The trip through the thicket was just as slow and painful as the descent down the cliff. Maybe it was worse. Even hacking at the vines with the Four-Point — while Auron swung his sword like a machete and Vincent batted nettles away with his clawgauntlet thing — she still had to stop every few minutes and disentangle herself.

Auron was worse off. The thorns seemed to reach after the teng-yi. What Yuffie managed to pass by trapped him. He had to stomp and shake himself free.

But if she thought Auron had it bad, the thicket seemed drawn to Vincent. Maybe the rest of the world thought his cloak was as ridiculous as she did. Maybe the bright red cloak drew the thicket's attention somehow. Maybe it was just the length and volume of the cloak; there was so much fabric to get entangled that it inevitably did, with every step.

They pushed all the way to some sort of natural clearing. Yuffie leaned up against a suspiciously thistle-free marble block that was shaped mostly like a suspiciously thistle-free marble block. Maybe it had been a statue of something, once, but there was no telling now if Maleficent had been partial to marble kittens or to marble girls.

She inspected her arms. The vines had got her good, even if they hadn't managed to hold onto her. She had thin red scratches from her shoulders all the way down to her wrists. She even had slim cuts on her fingertips.

Gawd, this place had tried to turn her into a bunch of hamburger meat or something.

She almost laughed at Vincent, though. There was definitely no stopping the grin. His cloak was more a long, bright red tatter. It'd be more useful torn into strips and made into bandages than worn.

Vincent ran the fabric through his fingers, deftly picking out stickers wherever he found them. He tossed them away with a casual flicking motion.

Rikku launched herself from Auron's shoulder, leaving Yuna to bear the staff-head's weight. Rikku whirled in place just a little above Yuffie's head, glittering in the early dawn light.

That drew Yuffie's attention to the horizon. She stomped a foot and swore with one of the long, ridiculous phrases she'd learned from Cid. She peppered it with a few inventions of her own.

Auron raised an eyebrow. But he didn't look at her like she was crazy.

"Sun's coming up, and I want the hell outta this thicket by noon." 

Surrounded by all that dark green? They'd bake! And then she'd be sweating and bleeding at the same time. Not her idea of fun.

"We should hurry," Vincent said. "Sundown will be dangerous here."

That made her laugh. "What, you mean this place gets less fun to run around in? I thought we'd hit rock bottom."

Vincent just gave her his I Am Princess Serious McStoic Of The Serious Business Lineface Kingdom look. She made a point to look him right in the eyes and ignore the look. None of those serious Over-Queen Of Woe Is We looks had any effect on her, and he needed to figure that out.

"This place was Maleficent's," Yuna said. Unlike Rikku, she stayed in her place on Auron's shoulder.

"And this is about as nice as Maleficent ever was," Rikku added, still turning slowly in the air to look at everything around them. "Even when she was happy."

"She was happy?" That was hard to believe. She couldn't picture it; Maleficent's face just wasn't _made_ to smile. She had the kind of face that always looked stern and foreboding.

"It was..." Yuna paused for a second. She finally settled on, "It was a long time ago."

Yuffie filed _not always a big seething pile of malice, jealousy, and spite_ away. Right next to _responsible for Ansem's research into the Heartless_. The thought burned.

The burn kept her company through the thicket. There were moments she thought she could have set the whole wasteland on fire just thinking about it. But it kept her from feeling the cuts and gashes the thorns left in her arms.

* * *

Radiant Garden: Maleficent's Palisade

Yuffie had always heard Maleficent's Castle called Castle Obsidian. From a distance, its dark, menacing towers had been a perfect counterpoint to the graceful white marble that made up Radiant Garden.

But Maleficent's castle wasn't black at all.

She stopped halfway across the drawbridge. It was narrower than she'd expected. She looked over the side, found herself staring into what might have been a moat, years ago. Now it was an overgrown ravine. She could hear water hiss through, choking past all the nettles.

At the end of the drawbridge, the gate awaited. For some reason, the portcullis was raised, but the great doors were closed.

"Daylight's wasting," Auron said, tone slow and drawling.

Vincent just kept moving forward, ignoring them all. The stoic set of his shoulders, the way he kept his head half-dropped, told her everything she needed to know. He wasn't moving forward out of curiosity.

He wanted this done and over with. Well, not like she could blame him. He had another trek through a briar patch that found his cape magically delicious to look forward to, after all.

Once they were close enough, Yuffie pressed her nose up against the outer wall of the castle. Then she took a step back, tilting her head. She even squinted. But no matter how she looked at it, now that she was up close, she could see the difference.

It wasn't black. It was dark green. Darker even than the vines she'd just hacked her way through. Or maybe all the plants creeping their way up the palisade — and twining around the chains that held the drawbridge down, and if _that_ didn't make this a death trap, nothing did — were messing with her sense of color.

Yuffie looked up. And up, and up. It was one of the highest walls she'd ever seen. Gargoyles of the same dark stone snarled down at them all from the very top, none seeming to mind the way the overgrowth made them hard to take seriously.

Then the first light of dawn hit the castle gate. Yuffie could only stare at the complex images engraved on the heavy doors. Tangled knots and swooping lines, roses whose shapes seemed mournful. Thorns and flames.

The bauble from Maleficent's staff began to sing. Yuffie watched as Yuna and Rikku lifted it above their heads.

She wasn't sure which of them let go first.

A purplish light swirled through the green crystal. The light brightened. The surface of the crystal began to spark. Lines of light so bright they were something like violet and something like white burned her eyelids.

The gates opened with a groan.

The first thing she saw was a rose blossom the width of her arm.

* * *

Radiant Garden: Maleficent's Bailey

There were roses everywhere. Big roses, little roses. Flowers as big as her head. Flowers as big around as her whole arm. Buds half as tall as she was.

And everywhere, thorns. Some of them were tiny, just barely visible needles. Some of them were as big as her hand, or even bigger.

Vines wove all throughout the courtyard, blocking most of the ways out or up. They even blocked the other doors. It was as if they hadn't fought through the thicket at all.

"You've got to be kidding me," Yuffie said, half to Rikku and half to Maleficent, who probably couldn't hear but still needed to learn that this was not okay. There were things you didn't do to adventurers and treasure-hunters, and this was one of them.

"Right back where we started," Auron replied. He might have been agreeing with her. There really wasn't any telling with him.

Rikku and Paine buzzed away, looking for who knew what. Fairy magic, maybe.

Yuffie watched them go, then grabbed Vincent by what was left of his cape. "Don't freak out, but we've gotta get to one of the towers." She paused, thought better of that, and explained: "I mean _I've_ gotta get to one of the towers. Nobody hides their treasure on the main floor."

Vincent raised an eyebrow.

"Well, unless your fire magic can blow the ground out from under us, I'm going to need a door, a gate, a staircase, or something else that lets people _into_ places. So I need into a tower. Seriously, don't freak."

After that little pep-talk, she turned to the tower wall least covered in vines — or covered in vines with the smallest thorns — and started searching for a place to plant her foot. She braced one foot against a clear spot on a thick vine, then heaved herself up, digging her fingers into handholds in the stone, where she could find them. Where she couldn't find them, she clung to any vine that didn't give way if she tugged it and wished Yuna was flying around handing out Cure spells the way Aerith did.

Three stories up, she found a mostly-clear window. It was even deep enough for her to wedge herself in between the plants and the sill. She drew one of her smaller shuriken, rammed it against the windowpanes.

Glass shattered. The empty lattice left her a place to grip so she could heave her shoulder against the window.

She grinned when it broke under her weight.

The tower room was surprisingly clear. She saw no flowers, no dead vines, no fallen thorns. Nothing. It had been a bedroom, once. Assuming the half-collapsed pile of sticks in the middle of the room had once been a bed, and the moth-eaten rags on top of it had been linens.

The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Yuffie pocketed her smaller shuriken and drew the Four-Point. No sign of Heartless yet — and why hadn't there been? They plagued both town and castle of Radiant Garden — but that didn't mean something wasn't wrong.

She crept through the room, heaving open heavy wooden doors. The first two were blocked off by vines, but the third led to a clear hallway.

Metal scraped against stone.

Yuffie nearly jumped out of her skin, turning toward the sound with Thunder crackling at her fingertips.

Back in the bedroom, Vincent slid in through the open window. A long, slow slide. Smooth. Pointy metal boots first, then legs. Then his hips.

"Stalking me, Vincent?" She didn't bother trying not to smirk.

"No." He frowned down at her, a little distantly.

That got half a laugh out of her, then she jerked her hand in a 'this way' gesture. "Come on."

She turned on her heel and went back to the hallway. She kept one hand on the wall. The stone felt smooth and cool, as if it wasn't ancient. As if it was normal. There wasn't even a thrum of weird fairy magic.

They made it down two floors before they encountered the vines. Vincent frowned at them, then laid the palm of his clawgauntlet thing against a green fleshy part. Yuffie watched as his eyes closed.

It started with heat. So hot she almost felt as if she were melting; she imagined her sweat and her skin turning to steam. Then light flared, bright in the half dark, orange and gold and flickering, licking.

"oG. yawa nruB," he said, softly, "nrub."

If she closed her own eyes and took a deep breath, she could smell heated cinnamon and something old and smoky, like charcoal. She opened her eyes to watch his magic take shape.

The vines turned brown. Their thorns fell. And then they all shriveled away, shrinking back beneath the fire.

Yuffie waited to ask until they were a few yards further down the stairs. "Where'd you learn Merlin's kind of magic?"

"He loaned me a few spells," Vincent said. His tone was calm, smooth, as if he hadn't been caught out at anything. But Yuffie was sure that just loaning spells wasn't enough to give your magic a taste or a smell and control Maleficent's vines.

 _Chocobo crap._ "Bullshit," she said. "Why didn't you do it before?"

"It would have been meaningless outside the threshold."

"And how do you know that?"

Vincent just looked at her. He kept his face bland. But she could hear a tinge of sorrow in his voice when he answered. "I am old, Yuffie. I have learned many things."

"Right, right, I'll just bet you have. Age and experience and whatever. So where'd you learn about Maleficent's castle?"

"Maleficent and Hades were once allies."

She blinked. That was right, Hades and Maleficent and a bunch of other crazies had all been working together. They weren't now, of course. Or maybe they were and were just hiding out until Sora lost his thing about cosmic justice and the universe not ending and all that jazz.

They were still yards away from the door to the ground floor when it burst open. Auron swept in through the doorway, huge-ass sword in his hands and fresh cuts down his arms. The fairies clung to or followed him.

"We were going to open that," Yuffie told them, in case they didn't know.

Auron's lip twitched into something that could have been a smirk and could have been murderous irritation. "No use waiting."

"That's what I always say! Now, since you're here..."

They hopped to it. There was no way underground. Not even Vincent's backwards-talking Fire trick could burn away the vines. Auron's katana simply rebounded straight off, and the fairies all shook their heads wildly when Yuffie suggested that they combine their fairy magic with Vincent's fire.

With no other options, they went up the staircase. Vincent drifted to the front of the group. His footsteps grew softer and softer. It was like having a ghost for a tour guide who was pretending he didn't know where he was.

They flung open doors. This tower seemed mostly bedrooms, and most of them had long decayed to rubble. Yuffie and the fairies studied every ruined tapestry, tapped every loose stone.

Before she knew it, they'd reached the top of the tower. Yuffie'd expected some sort of observatory, like Ansem housed in one of his towers. Some big round room full of tarnished models of planets and telescopes and complicated astronomy tools made out of gears and strings. That was what you put at the top of towers like this, right?

It wasn't.

It wasn't a library, either, which would have been her second guess.

"Another bedroom," Paine said. She mostly sounded bored, with just a shade of annoyance.

She looked to Vincent, but he didn't say anything. He didn't even venture in past the door.

The gleaming cherry wood of a huge bed took up one wall. Whoever had carved it (or magicked it into existence) had found a way to make the headboard blend in with the way the walls seemed to curve. Golden inlaid panels caught the light and glittered. A wooden hoop hung over the bed, shaded it with a thick pink canopy that pooled onto the floor.

On the other wall was a vanity, made of the same gleaming cherry wood. The wood had gilt inlays, sometimes panels, sometimes simple traceries. What caught Yuffie's eye, though, was the mirror: it wasn't glass but some sort of very bright metal. Copper? Bronze? She couldn't quite tell.

Yuffie tilted her head and peered more closely at the mirror. Her reflection took just a second longer to tilt its head, too. And there was something very _wrong_ with its face. She couldn't put her finger on it. Were the reflection's eyes darker? Was there an edge to the set of its mouth?

Either way, it was wrong.

A few feet away from the vanity was a toy chest. It was easily as tall as Yuffie, had the rounded top one expected of a fairy treasure chest. It was the same cherry wood and gilt as the rest of the room's furniture.

She lifted the lid. The weight forced a gasp out of her.

"Damn," she found herself saying when she finally had the lid off.

There was absolutely nothing inside that fit with the vanity, the pink canopy. Instead, it was filled with sheet after sheet of some sort of thick, off-white paper. And page after page were drawings of Radiant Garden's towers. They were always tiny backgrounds against a foreground of some sort of green space — a garden? The wasteland they'd just crossed?

Beneath those, though, were drawings of some sort of underground river bank. She could make out black stone and a black ceiling, with a roiling green-gray river churning past the banks.

Yuffie tossed the paper backward, out of her way. "Didn't know Maleficent was in touch with her inner child."

Ha, at last, something that belonged in a girl's room! She pulled the wooden box out of the chest and opened it. Inside lay strand after strand of pearls, some strands as long as her arms. An emerald locket. An emerald ring. Gold and silver rings without stones. One memorable item was set with so many into the ring itself that it looked _made_ of gems.

Two pieces didn't fit with all the rest: a lacquered black feather-shaped pendant on a silver chain, and a tarnished iron key on an equally tarnished iron chain.

Beneath the jewelry box was a thick book. It was longer and wider than her head, leather bound and held closed with a leather strap and an iron lock.

Rikku zipped away from Auron — who had opened up the wardrobe and was now staring at a closet full of silk peploses, most of them stiff with embroidery, all of them green. She spun a loop-de-loop in the air around the book.

"We'll definitely need that!"

"But not the jewelry."

Rikku shuddered and shook her head.

From across the room, still clinging to Auron, Yuna said, "No, we can't take it. Please put all the jewels back where you found them."

"I thought you were looking for treasure?"

Paine looked up from one of the sheets of paper Yuffie had discarded. "Yeah. Our treasure."

Vincent still didn't say anything. When Yuffie looked over at him, he was looking from one side of the room to the other. His gaze trailed slowly, like he was memorizing every detail. And then he'd start all over again.

So she piled all the jewels back into the jewelry box — and if she grabbed a ring or two, well, Maleficent owed her, right? — and piled all the stupid, creepy drawings back on top of that. The chest clicked ominously when she closed it.

So she turned her attention to the only other closed thing in the room: the dollhouse. It was maybe three feet tall and shaped like a tower. Pretty big but not obviously magical.

Except when Yuffie touched it, something hot and sharp and wrong rippled across her skin. She could feel it sweep from her fingers all the way to her toes, all the way up to her hairline and the back of her neck. Just like the mirror, something was wrong with this dollhouse.

So she looked at it. It just looked like a normal toy, maybe made out of really good wood. Every single "stone" in the castle wall was clearly delineated from every other stone. She pressed a finger to it and realized that she could slip her fingernail into the crevices.

She opened it.

It was just as exquisite on the inside. Every detail perfect, from the stone walls and the tapestries that covered them down to mirrors and tiny furnishings. Furniture made of oak and cherry wood. One bedroom had a tiny model spinning wheel, another a wash basin.

Strangest and most perfect of all was the top room. It looked exactly like the room they were standing in, from the bed with its pink canopy to a model of the treasure chest. The chest even opened and had scraps of paper in it.

Yuffie pushed aside the canopy and found herself gasping again.

On the bed lay a doll. The only doll in the room, and just as perfect in minute detail as the rest of the dollhouse's furniture. The skirt of her dress was made of interconnecting belts, each clearly distinct. Yuffie could even make out a stocking and garter peeking out from beneath the belts.

Rikku whooped. "It's her!"

Paine looked over sharply, then was suddenly hovering right next to Yuffie and Rikku. She inspected the doll closely and at last nodded, though she didn't say anything.

"Yunie, Yunie, it's—"

"Lulu," Yuna breathed from Yuffie's other side.

On the bed, the doll exhaled once without opening her eyes.

* * *

'I could tell you my adventures — beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly: 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.'

— Lewis Carroll, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_


	6. little dreams

_Radiant Garden: Merlin's House_

Vincent took a quick breath in through his nose, let it out through his mouth. It was no good. Even underneath the scent of healing Potions and cinnamon and black tea, he still smelled roses.

Aerith looked up at him and smiled. She took in a breath, too, and threads of something white and ancient shifted in her eyes. For a moment Vincent thought of the White Materia, of Holy and the surging crash of the Lifestream, of the screaming descent of Meteor.

But the moment flashed by in the taste of mint and Mako and old blessings. Every scratch ached at once, burning as if they had just re-opened. He looked down to his arm and saw a dozen cuts pinken and then knit themselves shut. 

Aerith's hands stilled over his arm, as if waiting. She wasn't waiting; he had seen her at the limits of her magic, coaxing more power or more casts from a Materia than it could give. She hadn't needed a Materia, but she had clearly pushed Cura to the far reaches of its tier. She breathed in deeply, eyes drifting closed and face a little pale. Her color returned when she opened her eyes.

Just a few yards away, Leonhart looked up from the leather-bound book Yuffie had brought back. Leonhart's gaze lingered on Aerith, weighty and sharp.

She smiled again, then stood and made her way over to Auron. The unSent only looked away from the dollhouse, and the fairies gathered around the woman sleeping within, when Aerith touched his shoulder. Vincent caught snatches of the conversation, her offer of Cure and his grim acceptance. But as Aerith placed her hands on Auron's bare arm, Vincent found himself scanning the room.

Ah. Surprisingly, she hadn't moved away from Leonhart or Cid. She was still in the midst of them with the book on her lap.

Yuffie turned a page. He traced the shape of her fingers, the angle of her wrists, and did not miss the way her attention sharpened on the page she was reading. She flipped back a page, then turned it again, and then looked up. Right at him.

Vincent saw the flowers engraved -- more like burned into or branded than truly engraved -- on the book's cover. A rose in full bloom, a lily beginning to droop, but the most detailed, the most-eyecatching, was a withered stalk of grain. He repressed a shudder; he wasn't actually as cold as his body thought it was.

The smell of roses intensified. And Galian, who never stopped longing for blood spilled in snow, began to howl.

Yuffie's eyes met his.

She flipped the book around, pages out, her fingers splayed at its spine.

A gaunt figure in a tattered red cloak stared out at him. On the opposite page, in calligraphy so ornate as to be nearly illegible in places, were the words _Vincent Valenntine, Monſter of Maleficent_.

Yuffie raised her eyebrows, mocking curiosity. There was no mistaking the line of her jaw, or the way her eyes had narrowed.

That expression wasn't an inquiry. She was daring him to try and explain it. As if there could be any explanation. He knew his own flaws, knew that Yuffie and the others _should_ see him for the monster he was. But the way AVALANCHE had viewed him, had welcomed him, had been —

He should explain. He deserved no less than her fury, than all their fury.

Yuffie turned the page, then dropped the book. Cid snatched it up, peering at it.

"The hell? You wanna try an' explain this, brat?"

She shook her head. "I've got nothing."

Vincent stood, made his way to them. Leonhart looked up, expression cold, and then away, but Cid handed the book over when he held his hand out for it.

He saw immediately why Yuffie had dropped it.

 _Yuffi Kiſaragi, Childe of Kohei_.

The image of her on the other side of the book was of a young girl in green, crouching close to the ground with something blue-green held between her index finger and her thumb.

"Vincent," she said. "What the hell is this book? How come we're in here, but not Cid or Squall?"

The book began to glow. The pages turned without his touching them, rifling until they reached a blank spot. Ink blurred and blotched and traced out shapes on the paper, words appearing in scratches in one place, an image of Yuffie as she was now taking shape elsewhere.

 _Yuffi Kiſaragi of Wutai, ſworne to Leuiathann_ , the book now read.

Cid whistled. "Damn. Bet this thing's a hit at parties."

Leonhart crossed his arms. "More like dangerous."

The book finished embellishing Yuffie's name. It skipped down a few a lines, then cheerfully informed them, in neat, careful script: _ſhe dreameth of dragonns. In remembering who ſhe once were, ſhe forget who ſhe be._

Yuffie grabbed the book, flipping it back to Vincent's entry before her own could finish. The book didn't correct her.

"I want to know about this. Monfter of Maleficent? Does this thing lisp?"

"That's a long s, kid. Real old kinda writing." But Cid was looking at him, too, with a jaundiced expression that told him he had perhaps ten minutes in which to explain himself.

Yuffie echoed it.

"You retrieved it from a child's prison in Maleficent's castle. You mean to tell me you believe it?"

Rather than answer him, she turned back to the book's very beginning.

_Κόρη,_

_That you might know, and all our debts be diſcharged._

It was Maleficent's handwriting, elegant and serpentine. He recognized it as easily as his own, as easily as Yuffie's or Cloud's.

"Yeah, sounds like a book full of lies, alright."

When he didn't answer, Yuffie opened her mouth to speak, to keep asking. Cid held up a hand. "Enough, Yuffie. Man's not gonna answer. Probably got a right not to, anyhow. Let it rest."

She closed the book with a crisp _snap_ and turned away, tucking it under her arm.

"Alright, alright, it's resting." She didn't need to flutter a hand dismissively for Vincent to hear the _For now_ under her words.

* * *

Yuffie dropped the book onto Merlin's table and dropped into one of the stuffed chairs. The fairies were still gathered around the sleeping woman in the dollhouse. They hadn't budged in an hour, not that Yuffie could blame them. She'd only wandered away out of the monotony of watching a sleeping woman breathe.

Well, that and watching someone sleep seemed a little on the creeptastic side to her.

She thought back to the red-eyed painting in that book, and then forced herself to think about something else. Like the fact that Merlin was murmuring things like _pu ekaW_ and _erom on peelS_ to the sleeping woman. The scent of burnt oatmeal cookies filled the air, but the woman didn't stir.

".ti dnammoc I, pu ekaW .revo si peels rof emit ehT"

Yuffie could almost taste the cookies. Golden brown on the top, and charred on the bottom. Blackening with every word he said, until she caught no hint of the raisins.

At last, Merlin shook his head and sighed. "I apologize, ladies. But whatever spell Maleficent laid on her cannot be undone by a wizard."

"We're going to have to bargain with her again," Paine replied, voice duller than usual.

"No, Paine." Yuna lifted her chin. "We aren't making any more deals with Maleficent."

Rikku smacked a tiny fist into a tiny palm. "We could try that book! She has to be in it!"

Auron's lips twitched up. She didn't really get Auron, but a total moron would have heard his _Don't bet on it_. Or maybe it was a _That's the spirit_. She really couldn't tell with him.

But Paine shook her head. "That's a deal with Maleficent."

"But she's not even here!"

Paine said nothing. After a moment, Rikku hung her head and sighed.

"How's it a deal with her if she's not here?" That one, she had to know. Was that book for her? Some totally bonkers way of paying off Maleficent's debt to her?

"Have you ever heard the Principle of Contagion?"

"The Principle of what?"

Merlin adjusted his spectacles. "The Principle of Contagion means that any piece of a whole is always _part_ of that whole, even if they're separated."

"Once together," Yuna said, quietly, "always together."

"So, what, because she used to own it, it can become her, or whatever?"

Merlin chuckled. "No, most likely not. It's like a spokesperson. For a fairy, any bargain made with that book is a bargain that she can collect on."

"Okay, so no magical book. There still has to be a way to break that spell, right?"

"No spell lasts forever." Yuna looked down at the sleeping woman. "There is a loophole. We just have to find it."

Yuffie picked the book up again, tuning out the mumbo jumbo jargon that Merlin and the fairies had started trading. She paged through until she found her new entry.

It was definitely her, sneakers and vest and dark eyes and all. It looked like some moron with a watercolor kit had painted it, all blobby and blurry, but that didn't change who the girl in the painting was.

The page just sort of sat there, half empty, for a minute before the ink started appearing, finishing the thought:

_ſhe dreameth of dragonns. In remembering who ſhe once were, ſhe forget who ſhe be, and for this will gift unto Hades ye ſtill-beating harte of her fateley-bounde._

* * *

_Radiant Garden: Aerith's House_

She left dinner early — and the clean-up to Aerith and Squall, natch — and took that stupid book up to her room. Even with her door closed, she sometimes heard the trail end of one of Aerith's jokes, and then Aerith's giggle while Squall and his hair silently lamented the existence of humor.

Where did that book get off, telling her that she was forgetting who she was? She wasn't. She was Yuffie Kisaragi of Wutai (wherever Wutai was). Her father was Godo Kisaragi. Her mother was —

Only she couldn't remember her mother's name or her face, only a pair of callused hands and the words _Real ninjas show monsters who's boss._

And she'd never known a thing about her father. Her mother had died when she was still too young to remember much. So why was she so sure his name was Godo?

Okay, fine, she was maybe getting a little mixed up. Mixed up or not, she wasn't giving anybody's heart to Hades. That was probably a great way to get even more weird new Heartless.

So she read the book again, turned the pages as harshly as she could without ripping them. This thing was going to make sense if it knew what was good for it.

She stopped on a portrait of a young girl whose theme color seemed to be green. Her hair was so dark it gleamed green. Her eyes were green. Her skin was pale green.

She wore the same kind of peplos that Hades wore, only it was green, too. A crown of flowers crossed over her head, but had a loose end that touched the ground. Chains of flowers dangled from her wrists all the way to her feet.

 _Kore,_ the other page said, _ye Maiden_.

Well. Now they knew who the kid was. Probably.

So she turned back to Vincent's page. The Monster of Maleficent.

It couldn't be true. Vincent had gone to the Underworld when his own had been destroyed. Hadn't he? It wasn't like he'd have just gotten loose — or started hanging out with Maleficent — if he had gone there. So when would he have even had time to be brought low by hunger and ironn chaines?

The story wasn't fitting.

Yuffie closed the book. She shut her window without making a sound. The rooftops were quiet, almost completely free of Heartless.

The tiny house Vincent shared with Auron — and, for now, the fairies — was only a street over. Yuffie didn't bother with the door. Easier just to slide a thin wire into the gap between the window and the sill. Flexible wrists and a steady grip meant she soon heard the soft click of the lock.

The window gave a godawful groan when she opened it. She froze.

Something red stirred in the hallway beyond. Could have been Vincent or Auron, easily. But it was Vincent who jerked the window the rest of the way open, Fire glittering around his gauntlet.

"Yuffie," he said. "This house has a door."

"You can't just keep something that messed up to yourself," she found herself saying as she slipped in the window. "I've gotta know, Red."

"I've seen you use doors."

"I mean, seriously, you're right about it being pretty much insta-shady because it came out of Maleficent's castle. And it's not like you'd have had _time_ to hang around with her if you were in the Underworld the whole time."

His face shuttered even more closed than usual. He didn't just look grim or expressionless. He looked like he wasn't even human. And not in the usual way, like the furries or the moogles. He could have been made of stone. Or some totally alien life form that had never even heard of emotions. Or a zombie. He probably was a zombie, come to think of it.

"Seriously. No joke. I've got to know. It's going to drive me crazy. Crazier. Way crazier. I mean it."

He gave her the High Overqueen We Are Not Amused By Your Motormouth Or Your Shenanigans, Also This House Has A Door look. She ignored it, because he really needed to learn that Yuffie Kisaragi, ninja extraordinaire, did not answer to Looks. Not even Squall's. Not even his.

"Don't trust the _Book of Storied Names_ , Yuffie."

His voice was soft, matter-of-fact. As if he was talking about something that didn't matter.

So how did he know the title of that book if it wasn't written on the cover or the spine?

Vincent went still. Like he'd realized that he'd said something he shouldn't have, admitted to something.

"It's true, isn't it?"

He looked away. Like talking about his past was somehow hard for the guy who'd practically monologued all about it the day they met.

Except he hadn't monologued all about it the day they met. She didn't know a thing about him, except that he used to know Cloud and he spent some time in the Underworld. Why did she think he had?

"Yuffie."

The way he said her name — sharp, like she pissed him off, but with a weird gentleness — made her look up.

"Is this what you want to know?"

Yes. No. What she wanted to know was why stained glass reminded her of things and why she thought she knew him.

"You're saying there's more? What, do I only get one answer?"

He looked at her. For once, it wasn't the We Are Unamused look. It wasn't even a look she was sure she recognized. He looked old. Old and sad and resigned, like losing everything was a foregone conclusion. Like he didn't even deserve any better than that.

Which just made her want to shake him.

"Hey! I asked you a question!"

"Without answering mine." The resigned look became a level stare that pinned her where she was. He didn't need to say it for her to hear _I see no reason to answer until you're sure of what you're asking_.

Yuffie shook her head, cursing under her breath, but went back to the window.

* * *

She took the roofs home. No matter how careful she had to be walking on shingles, it was still faster than using the streets. Heartless swarmed from the shadows between the moon and the horizon, but the Claymore system took down most of them. A casual Thunder here, a careless sweep of the Four-Point there, and they were no trouble at all.

He had known the name of the book and had chosen not to answer her. That was answer enough, wasn't it?

He had been Maleficent's monster. Somehow. Though how he'd had enough time for any of that, she had no idea. It didn't make any sense.

Just like it didn't make any sense that she was remembering the pagodas beside a river and beneath a mountain. She'd grown up _here_ , in the Garden, not in Wutai.

So where had Leviathan come from? How had he gotten inside her head?

A Claymore darted up right beside her. Yuffie turned to see what it was attacking, then had to duck a Fire. The roof tiles skittered under her feet, whispering a little more quietly than usual.

She traced the path of the fireballs to see one of those stupid book Heartless. If it could, it'd just stay back and attack with magic.

The sky flashed; bolts of lightning struck the roof around her and then vanished harmlessly, without causing a fire.

So Yuffie ran straight for the little freak. Better to just close in and stomp on it.

And then her footing started sliding around. She adjusted her footwork to catch the indentations in the tiles —

There were no indentations. She'd been running on cedar, not ceramic. She couldn't just slow down; the roof was de-thatching itself under her feet.

In a last resort, she dropped into a squat and put her fist down on the roof. She hissed as the roofing tore at her hand, but used the shift in momentum — slight as it was — to try and adjust the way she was falling.

She had to fall on her side. Had to grab the ledge —

The _yank_ as her arms struggled to hold her weight _up_ while gravity and inertia tried to pull her _down_ knocked the wind out of her. Her legs crashed into the building underneath the roof ledge.

She closed her eyes and focused on not falling like a dumbass. She swung one foot forward to plant it flat against the wall, then the other. Painstakingly, she inched her feet up the wall to give her arms leverage. Once she had leverage, she muscled her elbows onto the roof, kept inching her feet up, and dragged herself up, onto the ledge.

Crystals of ice smacked against wooden shingles, exploded into sharp fragments that melted the moment they touched her skin.

Yuffie cast Thunder until her temples throbbed, then stood and made her way across the roofs. Let the little freak follow her if it wasn't a puddle of Heartless goo; the Claymores would take care of it.

Once she hit the Aerith's place, she paused to sit on the roof ledge. She had to be careful as she climbed in her window. Her upper arms and back were already killing her.

She flopped onto her bed and tried to figure out why she'd been so convinced the roofs had dark ceramic tiles rather than cedar shingles.

* * *

The moon rises huge outside her window. For a moment it flickers dark, wreathed in red, and then it's a milk white moon again.

So she gets up and climbs from her window down to the street. It's a clear night; no clouds, no Heartless, and the Claymores never once appear. She crosses through the Bailey and then down to the walk toward the End. The ground is cool and smooth underneath her feet but she refuses to look down. 

She passes through the frozen crystal without touching the walls. She climbs down the cliff face at the End. The thicket parts in front of her, brambles pushing and rolling to get out of her way. The vines and bushes undulate. She doesn't feel the fallen thorns as she walks.

Maleficent's gate is open. She looks up at that huge, white moon. Then she looks back to the garden.

The vines have all died. There are no roses anymore.

A green girl perches on the edge of an ornamental fountain. She has no chains of flowers. Her peplos billows in a wind Yuffie doesn't feel.

The girl looks up at her, and smiles, and falls backwards. Water splashes up — turns red —

And then the fountain burbles with pale fire. From behind her, someone clears his throat.

Yuffie turns around and sees Hades, white teng-yi wrapped right-over-left unravelling from the bottom up to become his usual black robes.

"What'd I tell ya about wishes, huh, kid?" His voice has his standard strange combination of wry, deadpan amusement and manic energy.

"A fat lot of nothing useful, Corpseface."

His hair turns red, steam hissing out his ears. "I tried to warn you."

"Huh, that was a warning? Felt more like you were trying to piss me off."

"There's a price," Hades says, and suddenly he's holding white wool that stains itself red. "You get what you pay for, and you haven't paid up yet."

"What are you even talking about?"

"You took what was mine — transported stolen goods, as it were — and maybe you did it because of his wish, or maybe you did it because it was _your_ last wish. But you did it." Hades levels a finger at her. "And you've got to pay up sooner or later."

In the face of that intensity and seriousness, what else can she do? Yuffie flaps a hand, breezy. "Do you accept Munny, or do I need to find six actual coin-shaped coins?"

Hades's hair turns red again, but then he turns and stalks away, saying nothing. He paces to the gate and back, all without saying a word.

And some of what he said before sinks in.

"Wait a minute. What do you mean his wish? And what do you mean _my_ last wish?"

Hades smiles. At first she can't figure out what's wrong with the expression, until she realizes that he has no visible gums. It's just teeth, all the way down.

"I can't tell the stories of the living. Kill him, though, and I'll tell you everything you want to know. Everything he's hiding, everything he lied about — I'll tell you all of it."

The fountain's hiss becomes a burbling splash, no longer fire but clear cold water. She knows without even looking back that she could lose herself in that fountain.

Yuffie opens her mouth to tell him no.

Hades brings one cold hand up to her face, presses his thumb against her cheek. He leans down, and says, for once not in the tone of a used Gummy ship salesman, "Give him back, and I'll let you keep your world."

He straightens, turns away. "Or don't. But Maleficent's on her way back. Think fast."

And then he's gone, and the white moon is gone, and the fountain is gone, and she dreams she is sitting alone in her room, leaning her head against her window.

* * *

But in your dreams, whatever they be.   
Dream a little dream of me.

— Mama Cass, "Dream A Little Dream Of Me"


End file.
